Bet You Never Had a Week This Crazy Where You Live

[N4H]

My beeyooteeful little burg of Vancouver Canada has gone suddenly nuts.

It began Friday night. We get a news update interrupting television telling us twenty people were piling into a balloon and it caught fire, then took off. They were jumping from the balloon in the air. There's video I think.

Witnesses recount balloon fire horror - Americas - MSNBC.com (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20433540/)

OK so later the TV is broken into again, and they're telling us 30 people from some silly religion were walking along a highway at 11:30 at night, and a truck piled into them killing 3 and sending 17 to the hospital. They're claiming the mass midnight highway stroll is some kind of tradition, or ritual, or something. Yeah, right.

canada.com | Article (http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=5b4020cb-118b-40e4-a680-2c4b734a4d5c)

So then the next day someone throws a hooker out a highrise window, or some such thing.

Story | The Vancouver Sun (http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html?id=87b65227-7585-47ba-b3ac-3e1d8b0b9865&k=22059)

Some other stuff happened, but I don't have links, like this woman was sliding down a mountain on a wire of a ski lift, and the wire broke. Don't know if she lived, or not.

Then last night we hear someone's chopping off people right feet, and scattering them around the islands off shore.

Severed feet found - Current Events - CKA (http://www.canadaka.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=26837&highlight=)

You add it all up, and we might have that Bridge accident in Minnesota beat for deaths and injuries. They didn't happen all at once though, so you don't hear about it.

[goldenboy]

I do recall hearing about the balloon catastrophe. Think that made a fair amount of national news in the States. Horrific.

I have been to a sort of a...semi-Indian/Hindu wedding. The bride was German/Catholic though, so no late night wandering on the highways.

I think the dumbest wedding tradition I've heard of is firing automatic weapons into the air—like in Gaza, Pakistan, etc. Bullets raining down on people...I think one wedding was fired on by US troops cos they were mistaken for Taliban fighters, something...

[teentitan]

Ahh don't forget the 71 year old driver in the pickup truck that killed 6 was also beaten up by some of the crowd from the wedding. Heard he got the brake and accelerator confused because there was no skid marks from braking.
Guess the mushrooms bloomed early this year for all of this to happen.

[Gollanth]

Seems like Vancouver might be getting a visit from agents Mulder & Sculley soon then...... :)

[N4H]

I'm not sure if you're joking, or not. You remember all the better X File episodes were filmed in Vancouver right?

Actually Vancouver's always been a little nuts. There's a case before the courts right now where this guy chopped up over 30 women and fed them to his pigs.

[prydain]

There must be something in the water...

:)

[teentitan]

Close Pry but it's all the rain they get...it seems to make some of the locals a little depressed.

[N4H]

There's even a name for it (which I forget), but it doesn't usually set in until the rainy season of the winter.

You might have hit on something though TT. This has been an unusually rainy summer.

[prydain]

Close Pry but it's all the rain they get...it seems to make some of the locals a little depressed.

Ah good point. I have read in a few different places that there are theories that light has effects on the body and mind and that some people even do "light therapy", I don't know much about it though, but I guess it being cloudy and rainy all the time could definitely have those effects if the light thing is true.

[teentitan]

Well Pry the best source of Vitamin D is from the sun. When I lived in BC, on Vancouver Island, the expression was "We don't tan here...we rust". On the north end of the island where I lived it averaged about 200 inches a year in rain.
Also I believe it is called SAD's Seasonal Affected Disorder. There are light machines and I do know that a lot of BC'ers use it as well as Alaskans and Northern Canada citizens. Plus BC does have the highest suicide rate in Canada.

[Gollanth]

Ah good point. I have read in a few different places that there are theories that light has effects on the body and mind and that some people even do "light therapy", I don't know much about it though, but I guess it being cloudy and rainy all the time could definitely have those effects if the light thing is true.

Yep, tt has it spot on. I was diagnosed with it about 12 years ago & it ain't a lot of fun I can tell you. It's basically a complaint where the lack of bright light in the winter prevents your brain from producing a hormone (I think it's seratonin, but don't quote me - it's late, and I'm hungry and I don't think well when I'm hungry). It causes depression, compulsive eating and drowsiness. A lot of people who live in the northerly latitudes suffer with it, as we get much shorter days in winter.

We usually feel lots better in the summer, but there have been a lot of cases where people have developed symptoms this year because of the bad summer. Gawd help us when winter comes around again......

[Miffed67]

Good lord, what are y'all feeding them up there?

I'd put a lot credence in SAD being the culprit in random, postal worker gone nuts type killings....or people doing just stupid things, even....then again, some people don't have a lot of common sense. You see a lot of that around here, trust me. I don't know, tho....this seems like just a rash of weird stuff!

[N4H]

There's this suspension bridge here. It's a tourist thing. It goes over a giant ravine. You walk over it.

One time this lady was walking across it, then she suddenly leaned over grabbed her daughter, and chucked her over. It's on video. I might not have described it 100% accurately (might have been a baby), but anyway, she was depressed. Depression isn't an uncommon excuse for a lot of nutty things that happen up here. Don't know how it is where you are, but the depression defence is common in Vancouver courts. I think one guy even tried to claim the SAD thing.

[teentitan]

Don't forget the darkness in the far north and the suicide rate. When one kid kills themself the village knows there will be more. It's almost a suicide pact deal amongst friends.
Constant rain and dark can make anyone go loopy. Hell when I was in the far North during the summer when it's 24/7 daylight people go strange and it's not from the isolation we were in. People would sit in their rooms just to have darkness around them.